3. Wart

M*tftf"*£

BISHOP SEABURY'S COMMUNION-OFFICE.

A SERMON

PKEACHED IN

GRACE CHURCH, MWINGTON.

FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY,
SEPTEMBER 26, 1886,

Rev. SAMUEL HART, D.D.
Professor in Trinity College, Hartford, and Registrar of the Diocese of

Connecticut.

HARTFORD, CONN..
Press of The Case, Lockwood & Bkainabd Company.
1886.

AN HISTORICAL SERMON.

I. Con. xi. 23-26.

" For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you,
That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread;
" And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this
is my body, which is broken for you : this do in remembrance [or, for a
remembrance] of me.
"After the same manner also he took the cup when he had supped,
saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood : this do ye, as oft as
ye drink it, in remembrance of me.
"For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew [or,
shew ye] the Lord's death till he come."
The great Apostle to the Gentiles, because he was not of
the number of the Twelve, had not been present at the insti
tution of the Sacrament of the Lord's death ; but, as he tells
us in the text, he learned the history of that institution from
the Lord Himself. And when he solemnly committed to
writing that which he had taught his converts concerning
this, he prefaced it with almost exactly the same words which
he used a little later in recounting the fundamental facts of
the Christian faith, saying: "I delivered unto you that which
I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to
the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose
again the third day according to the Scriptures." * There
would seem to be little room for doubt that an act of our
Lord concerning which He made a special revelation to St.
Paul and of which St. Paul spoke as he did, was an act of the
utmost importance in itself and in its relations to His people.
Yet in outward form it was a simple act. As He was eating
the passover-feast with His disciples on the evening which
introduced the day of His death, the Lord took bread, blessed
* I. Cor. xv. 3, 4.

it with thanksgiving to God, brake it, and giving it to His
disciples, bade them eat it, telling them that it was His body
which was then given* for them. And when the feast was
ended, He took the cup of wine, and in like manner blessed
it, and gave it to them to drink, saying that it was His blood
of the New Testament which was then shedf for them and
for many. He commanded them to do in remembrance — for
a memorial — of Him that which He thus did ; and, perhaps
from His express words at the time, they understood that
they and those who should come after them, obeying this
command, would show forth the Lord's death until He should
come again..
The act, as I said, seemed in itself a simple act. Yet it is
impossible to read the few words in which it is described
without feeling that it has a very profound and a very solemn
meaning ; even as it is impossible not to feel that those who
stood or knelt J in the upper room and saw what the Lord
did and heard what He said, must have known that this was
indeed a most momentous hour. Their Master, Who had
more than once prophesied of His coining passion and death,
now told them that the passion and death were present facts,
that for them His body was then given and His blood poured
out. Doubtless they did not then understand the full mean
ing of His words ; but afterwards they could not have failed
to know that He who thus spoke had then presented Himself
before God as the great Sacrifice for the sins of the world,
proved by His holy life to be the "Lamb without blemish
and without spot," and voluntarily offered Himself for the
death in which He was so soon to be a passive victim, suffer
ing at the hands of wicked men. And in this proper sense
of the word, it seems to me that there can be no question but
that the sacrifice of Christ was offered to God in the upper
* The present participle is used: SiS6pevov (St. Luke). The word
KAopevov in St. Paul is not read by the best editors.
\ iKxwdpevov (St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke).
X It seems that our Lord must have stood for the blessing; if' so, the
disciples, in all probability, stood or knelt when they received the
Sacrament.

room and at ¦ the time of the institution of the Eucharist*
Thus performing the greatest act of His earthly life, the
Lord invoked a blessing upon the bread and the wine which
He took into his hands, at the same time giving thanks to
His heavenly Father ; f the thanksgiving must have been,
above everything else, for the great work of redemption of
which He could then speak as if it were accomplished ; the
blessing must have been in order that the elements might be
for His disciples that which He presently declared them to
be as a means of spiritual grace. And then, as He gave them
the bread and the wine, thus connected with the great obla
tion of Himself and blessed with thanksgiving, He told them
that they were His body and His blood, and that the repeti
tion of that which he had done was to be their memorial of
Him. These words, one can hardly doubt, must have been
spoken and understood in the light of the sacrificial act
and the blessing which had preceded them. The former
part of the words — and these again are interpreted by the
discourse recorded by St. John in the sixth chapter of his
Gospel — tells of a participation in the benefits of the Lord's
sacrifice by means of eating the bread which He thus identi
fied with His body and drinking the wine which He thus
identified with His blood; and the word which we render
" remembrance " or " memorial,":}: coupled with the command
that it should be often made until He should come again,
tells of a memorial before God whereby the one sacrifice
should be commemorated and its all-sufficient merits pleaded
for all the needs of the Church and of mankind.
It is not my purpose, however, to speak especially at this
time of the doctrine of the Sacrament of the Holy Com
munion or of the benefits which come to those who receive
it according to Christ's ordinance. I wish rather, having
already called to your remembrance the act of institution and
the meaning of its several parts, to speak of the form of
* See Johnson's Unbloody Sacrifice, i. 60, sqq. (ed. 1714).
f AXoyyaac, of the bread (St. Matthew, St. Mark); evxapiarfiaag, of the
bread (St. Luke, St. Paul), and of the cup (St. Matthew, St. Mark).
X avapvnaic.

service in which, following the Lord's command, our Church
celebrates the memorial of His death. And I think it
specially proper that I should do this to-day, as it is almost
exactly a hundred years ago that our forefathers in Connecti
cut received from their first bishop a Communion-office which
furnished the Prayer of Consecration to our American Prayer-
Book. The service of the Holy Communion, looking back to our
Lord's words and deeds in the upper room, from which it
takes its example and its authority, contains in its most solemn
and essential portion three distinct things, corresponding to
the successive parts of the original institution. The bishop
or the priest takes bread and wine, already set before God as
an offering of the fruits of the earth and representing the first-
fruits, and presents them to God as a memorial of the body
broken and the blood poured out when atonement was made
for sins by Christ's death, thus offering the unbloody sacrifice
of the Christian Church, a memorial of the one only sacrifice
that could take away sin. He next blesses them by invoking
upon them the blessing of God, that they may be the means
of communicating to those who receive them the benefits of
the sacrifice and the death of Christ ; and the form of this
blessing has been from the beginning a prayer that the Holy
Ghost may make the bread and the wine to faithful receivers
the body and the blood of Christ.* Then the consecrated
elements are distributed to the communicants and reverently
eaten and drunk by them, in faith that their souls are thus
made partakers of Christ, and with thanksgiving.
Thus doing, thus believing, thus teaching, the Apostles
and those who have succeeded them, and with them the
whole Church, have showed forth the Lord's death ; and thus
it shall be showed forth till He come. A memorial of the
sacrifice of Christ made by the offering of bread and wine, a
blessing of the elements by the invocation of the Holy Spirit,

*On the form of the Invocation, see Bishop Dowden's (of Edinburgh)
Historical Account of the Scottish Communion Office, pp. 16, sqq. and Appendix
B. The book is invaluable to the student of our Liturgy.

and an eating and drinking of the gifts and creatures thus con
secrated — these, and in this order, have been the essential
parts of the service wherever the practice of the ancient
Church has been retained. There is some reason for thinking
that at the very first the words of the Lord at instituting this
Sacrament, which have been preserved by the Apostles and
Evangelists, were not repeated until at the time of the distri
bution of the elements the bishop or priest said : " The Body of
Christ," " The Blood of Christ " ; * but from a very early time
•the whole account of the institution has been solemnly re
hearsed before God at the beginning of the prayer of conse
cration, as at once a sufficient warrant for the words and acts
which are to follow and as a designation of the bread and the
wine of the first-fruits to the sacred purpose of a memorial of
the sacrifice of Christ. Thus, prefacing this most solemn act
by words of instruction, of profession of faith, of repentance
and absolution, and of lofty praise, and following it by thanks
giving and benediction, the Church has continued her wor
ship and her life, has presented herself before the heavenly
Father, and has received from Him His greatest blessing.
This order of the essential parts of the eucharistic service, in
which, after the repetition of the words of institution, an
oblation is made before God, and then follows the invocation
of the Holy Ghost, after which the consecrated elements
are eaten and drunk, has been the rule of the Church's
worship from the beginning.! It has never ceased to be the
type of the worship of the great Church of the East ; and it
was for a considerable time followed by all the branches of
the Church in the West as well.
After a while, however, the liturgy of the Church of Borne,
like almost everything else which testified to her faith or her
practice, became confused and lost its ancient form. And
when, at the time of the Keformation in England, the service

*!

* See Mr. Ffoulkes's Primitive Consecration of the Bucharistic Oblation,
pp. 150, sqq.
fit must suffice to refer to Brett's Collection of Liturgies, and to Ham
mond's Liturgies Eastern and Western, especially chapter ii. of the
Introduction to the latter.

of the Holy Communion was put into English, though in
most noble and impressive words, it followed an order which
was Boman and not primitive, praying for the blessing of the
Holy Spirit not only before the words of Christ were rehearsed
to set them apart for holy uses but also before the oblation
by which they were made a memorial of Christ's sacrifice.
After three years, partly (no doubt) owing to other influences,
but partly (as it seems to me) because those who were revising
the Prayer-Book saw that the form was defective in arrange
ment, the English prayer of consecration was put into the.
form in which it has now been used for nearly 335 years.
It is, to say the least, a most unfortunate form, for it contains
no words of oblation and no explicit invocation of the Holy
Spirit. It is a cause of wonder that so learned and devout a
Church has been satisfied to use through all these years so
imperfect a service in her highest act of worship and to
separate herself to such an extent from that which has the
sanction of the best and purest days of undivided Christendom.
That we, brethren, have used here in Connecticut for a
century, and throughout our land for nearly as many years, a
liturgy which, in the essential points of which I have been
speaking, reproduces and joins us to the worship of the very
earliest days, we'owe thanks, under God, to our first bishop.
Before he was ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood,
he had spent a little time in Edinburgh in the study of
medicine ; * and thirty-two years after, when he found that
it was in vain for him to ask for the episcopate at the hands
of the English bishops, he had gone to Scotland again to be
consecrated Bishop of Connecticut. The weakened remnant
of the ancient Church of Scotland, suffering from political
disabilities and religious persecution and for the time (so far
as man could do it), utterly cut off from the Church of England,
had, before his second visit, adopted a Communion-office
based upon that of the primitive and undivided Church.f Its
*He went abroad prepared for the ministry and seeking ordination ; and
he stayed in Edinburgh only until his twenty-fourth birthday, that he might
be ordained to the priesthood and return home at once.
t See its history in Bishop Dowden's Historical Account.

learned and devout scholars (for such there were, in spite of
poverty and distress) shared with the learned and devout men
in England who were debarred from active service in the
English Church because they could not conscientiously take
the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, a strong desire
to study and to follow the customs of the primitive Church,
especially in its liturgies; and there had been used in the
small congregations of the English non-jurors since about the
year 1700, and in the proscribed assemblies of the Scottish
episcopalians since 1755, a liturgy containing in its prayer of
consecration, after the Lord's words of institution, an oblation
of the elements to God and an invocation of the Holy Spirit
to bless and sanctify them ; * and nowhere else in Western
Christendom was such a liturgy employed. In the " Concor-
date" which Bishop Seabury made with his consecrators, he
promised " to take a serious view of the Communion-office
recommended by them, and, if found agreeable to the genuine
standards of antiquity, to give his sanction to it, and by gentle
methods of argument and persuasion to endeavor, as they
have done, to introduce it by degrees into practice, without
the compulsion of authority on the one side or the prejudice
of former custom on the other."f
When Bishop Seabury met his clergy at Middletown in
August, 1785, a committee was appointed to act with the
bishop in proposing such changes in the Prayer-Book as
should be thought needful. A few alterations, made neces
sary by the change of civil government, were agreed upon and
published at once ; others which were proposed were reserved
for a meeting of the Convocation to be held at New Haven
in September. But, to use the bishop's own words, "the
Church people in Connecticut were much alarmed at the
thought of any considerable alterations being made in the
Prayer-Book " ; % and nothing was done at that time. And
when the convention representing the Church in the States

*Md.
fDr. Beardsley's Life of Bishop Seabury, p. 152.
X Documentary History of the Church in Connecticut, ii. 287.
2

10
to the south of New England, in none of which was there as
yet a bishop, meeting in September and October, 1785,
adopted an ecclesiastical constitution on principles different
from those held by Connecticut Churchmen and prepared the
book known as the " Proposed Book," * having many varia
tions — some of them serious ones — from the Prayer-Book of
the English Church, the clergy and with them the people of
this diocese were unwilling to follow their example. Matters
remained as they were ; and when the clergy met with their
bishop in Convocation at Derby, September 22, 1786, he
delivered his second charge, in which, besides giving wise
counsel, he spoke in strong but temperate language of the
work of the southern convention, and in particular criticized
its proceeding to such important acts as it had undertaken
before there were any bishops to preside over and to guide its
deliberations. At the same time, not (as it would appear) with
out the assent of his clergy, f he set forth and " recommended
* The compilers of the Proposed Book, as is evident from their preface,
thought that they were not only acting on the lines of the attempted revis
ion of the English Prayer-Book in 1689, but also actually adopting many of
the alterations then proposed. An acquaintance with this revision seems also
to be assumed in the preface to our present Prayer-Book. But a comparison
of the statements, as to the changes of 1689, given in a note to the preface
of the Proposed Book, with the printed copy of what was actually pre
pared in that year, shows that these statements "are partly without
foundation, partly very incorrect and misleading, and in only a few points
at all trustworthy." In fact, the editors of the Proposed Book relied on Drs.
Nicholls and Calamy, who wrote from memory or hearsay and knew very
little of value about the details of the matter. The manuscript report of
1689 was lost from 1727 (at least) to 1854. It is quite impossible that (as
suggested in the Church Review, September, 1886, p. 217) a copy of it
should have been in the hands of our revisers in 1786 or 1789. The whole
matter was discussed at length in the Churchman newspaper, December
20, 1873.
\ Bishop Seabury was not, as is sometimes insinuated or charged, in the
habit of acting without the "advice and consent " of his clergy. The state
ment has been lately repeated in the press that he claimed for himself the
right of conferring degrees in divinity. In fact, the Connecticut " College
of Doctors of Divinity " was established by a vote of the Convocation of
the bishop and clergy, October 2, 1790, as "the Bishop's Council, to be
consulted on any emergency that may arise"; and it was voted in 1791
that the installment of new doctors — none were ever appointed except the

11
to the Episcopal Congregations in Connecticut " a Commun
ion-office almost identical with that which was in use in Scot
land. It was generally adopted in this diocese, and the clergy
were strongly attached to it ; some of them were still using it
when Bishop Brownell was consecrated in 1819. And, what
is much more important, when the first really General Con
vention met in 1789, and our Prayer-Book was put into its
present shape, instead of the defective prayer of consecration
from the English Book, that from Bishop Seabury's office was
taken, with a single alteration, which only served to make its
meaning more clear.* Bishop White, the only other mem
ber of the House of Bishops who was present, assented to it
willingly ; and in the other house we are told that when it
had been read impressively by the President it " was admit
ted without opposition, and in silence if not in reverence." f
And the Communion-office thus adopted has been thankfully
used throughout our Church ever since.J
first four — should be by diploma from the College of Doctors. Besides, a
careful examination of the manuscript records of Convocation and the
printed journals of Convention shows that the members of the "Col
lege " were not, as a rule, styled " Doctor " till after they had received the
degree from some college chartered by the legislature and authorized to
confer degrees.
*See Bishop Dowden, loco citato, pp. 16, sqq.
f See Historical Sketch and Notes, appended to reprint of Bishop Seabury's
Communion- Office, pp. 41, sqq.
X The statement of the bishop of Ohio (Convention Address, 1886) that
' ' the slight alterations made in our liturgy to conform to the Scotch rite
became a subject of discussion and added to the difficulty in the way of the
subsequent transmission of English Orders," is certainly based on a mis
apprehension. For the alterations were made October 14, 1789, and Bishops
White and Provoost had been consecrated more than two years and a half
before, February 4, 1787; and it was never heard that there was any dis
cussion or objection in regard to the consecration of Bishop Madison in
September, 1790.
Bishop Seabury's Office (following the Scottish) differs from that in our
Prayer-Book in several particulars, as to two of which a word may be
added here. (1) In the former the Prayer for the Church follows imme
diately on the Prayer of Consecration. The position of this prayer — "the
Great Intercession " — is different in each of the five families of ancient
liturgies, as will be seen by referring to Hammond's Liturgies, pp. xx., sqq.
The place which it holds in our office, immediately after the Offertory,

12
So it is that, under God, we acknowledge our obligations
to our first bishop for giving to us in Connecticut a hundred
years ago, and to the whole Church in this land three years
later, a form of words for the highest act of our worship which
recalls and represents that which our Lord said and did in
the upper room "the same night in which He was betrayed,"
which conforms our service to that offered by the undivided
Church in ancient days and by the great Church of the East
in all the centuries of its history, which is confessed by all
liturgical scholars to contain the essence of that which should
be found in such a service, and which enables us to " show
the Lord's death " in the way in which he commanded " till
He come." For what has thus been done for our spiritual
ancestors, for ourselves, and for those who shall come after
us, we may well thank God. This liturgy is for us a bul
wark of the faith ; it is our shield against false teaching
and unseemly controversies in regard to the sacrament of
shows an historical connection with theGallican liturgy and, through this,
with the Ephesine — a connection which should be retained and highly
valued.. (2) In Bishop Seabury's office the Confession and Absolution with
the Comfortable Words are placed immediately before the administration.
But certainly the preparation of the communicants should precede the
great act of worship in oblation and invocation, which is the act of the
whole Church and not of the priest as an individual.
The idea that the Prayer of Consecration ends with the Words of Insti
tution, not including either the Oblation or the Invocation, seems to have
met with acceptance in some quarters where this would hardly be expected.
The joint committee of the General Convention appointed in 1868 "to
examine the stereotype plates of the standard edition of the Prayer-Book
. . and to correct manifestly typographical errors thereof," reported in
1871, among the "alterations" which they had made, that "pronouns
referring to our Blessed Lord in some special cases have been printed with
capitals, e. g. . in the Prayer of Consecration." (Journal, 1871, pp.
533, sqq.) But this capitalization of pronouns (including, by the way,
those relating to God the Father as well as God the Son) was carried
in the corrected Standard Book only through the Words of Institution.
Precisely the same thing has been done in the "Book Annexed," both as
reported to the Convention of 1883 and as adopted by it. In fact, if we
may judge by the printing, it would appear from each of these three
editions that the Oblation and the Invocation were less important or less
solemn parts of the service than the Prayer of Humble Access; for in this
latter the pronouns are capitalized.

13
love ; it furnishes a basis of unity which, let us hope and pray,
in days that are not far off shall do something to knit
together the severed parts of Christendom " in truth, unity,
and concord."
I think, my brethren, that I can not better close this ser
mon than with the wise and instructive words in which, a
century ago this last week, Bishop Seabury spoke to his
clergy with reference to the Holy Communion. Following
his teaching, and using his words of oblation and of blessing,
both of which he brought to us as a part of our heritage in the
Catholic Church, we shall, I believe, hold fast to the truth of
revelation and offer acceptable worship and prayer, in the
name of Jesus Christ, to God our heavenly Father.
"Some writers on this subject," said the Bishop,* " under
the idea of making it plain to ordinary capacities, have, I
fear, banished all spiritual meaning, by discarding all mys
tery from it, making it a mere empty remembrance of
Christ's death. Others have considered it as an arbitrary
command and an instance of God's sovereignty over us, requir
ing our obedience for wrath's sake. Others represent it
simply as the renewal of our Christian covenant, expecting
no particular benefits from it. The primitive Christians had
very different sentiments from these concerning the Holy
Communion, and so I suppose our Church has also. They
considered it not as the renewal of the Christian covenant,
but a privilege to which the Christian covenant, into which
we had been admitted by Baptism and which had been rati
fied in Confirmation, entitled us. Nor [did they consider it]
as an arbitrary command of God, to show His sovereign
authority over us ; nor as a bare remembrance of Christ's
death; but as the appointed means of keeping up that
spiritual life which we received in our new birth, and of
continuing that interest in the benefits and blessings of
Christ's passion and death which was made over to us when
we became members of His mystical body. They called and
esteemed it to be the Christian sacrifice, commemorative of

* Second Charge, pp. 17-19. See also his Discourses, Vol. i., No. vi.

14
the great sacrifice of atonement which Christ had made for
the sin's of the whole world ; wherein, under the symbols of
bread and the cup, the body and blood of Christ which He
offered up and which were broken and shed on the Cross are
figured forth; and being presented to God our heavenly
Father by His priest here on earth, the merits of Christ for
the remission of sins are pleaded by him and, we trust, by our
great High Priest Himself in heaven ; and being sanctified
by prayer, thanksgiving, the words of institution, and the
invocation of the Holy Spirit, are divided among the commu
nicants as a feast upon the sacrifice. And they did believe
that all who worthily partook of the consecrated elements
did really and truly, though mystically and spiritually, partake
of the Body and Blood of Christ. Our Church evidently
teaches the same thing in her Catechism, defining 'the in
ward part or thing signified ' by the bread and wine in the
Holy Communion to be 'the Body and Blood of Christ,
which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faith
ful in the Lord's Supper.' This doctrine seems to be founded
on what our Saviour said in the sixth chapter of St. John's
Gospel, concerning eating His flesh and drinking His" blood,
which, when compared with the institution of the 'blessed
Eucharist as recorded by the Evangelists, will sufficiently
justify the Church in her opinion and judgment. We have
therefore a right to believe and say that in the Holy Com
munion the faithful receiver does, in a mystical and spiritual
manner, eat and drink the body and blood of Christ repre
sented by the consecrated bread and wine, and does thereby
partake in the atonement made by the passion and death of
Christ, having remission through Him of all past sins and
eternal life assured to him."
TQI FIANTOKPATOPI IIANTEAEHMONI H A03A.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 08540 1025